


teenage agony in your thirties

by sammywhatammy



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1252354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammywhatammy/pseuds/sammywhatammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>how Terra struggles from realization onward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	teenage agony in your thirties

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a writer. but a few of the lines got into my head a few weeks ago and wouldn't leave me alone, and suddenly one night I had effortlessly written about half of this. the rest took more time to muse over. I'm not a good writer, but this more or less came out in the tone and mood I hoped for. 
> 
> also the title is totally what's actually happening.

you wonder, sometimes, what you ever did to deserve this.  
  
that first time she dressed up for a formal occasion, something that flowed around her in elegant statement of her newfound womanhood, you felt your vision dim until she was all you could see with any brightness or clarity. it took every effort to say, as neutrally as possible, that she looked beautiful, and the way she shyly lit up was enough to convince you that the sun would never be considered a true source of light for you ever again.  
  
you didn't understand what it all meant until you had lost everything, cost them everything, until years after you had all found each other again and the memories and memories of feelings and feelings themselves either came to you slowly in gentle cascades or slammed into you all at once, tearing you apart. how could you have not seen what is now so obvious, in your bitter age and hard-won wisdom and experience?  
  
you know you can never tell her. the balance between the three of you is delicate now, and there's much healing to be done. and so much work, too, to restore a legacy that was nearly lost forever with the three of you. besides…you've always been her brother, her best friend, her childhood companion and sparring partner and fellow student and…too many perfectly innocent things to be ever more, to her.  
  
right?

 

*

  
  
it's easy enough to ignore, most of the time, the way she makes you feel.  
  
except when she bakes, and her eyes light up as her hands deftly knead and fold, her face specked with flour.  
except when the light catches her hair in just the right way to make it shine like water, and you catch yourself thinking incredibly stupid, insipid notions about nymphs from myths she used to read to you about.  
except when she laughs, the sound of tinkling bells on a sunny day.  
except when she's sad, and you think of moonlight and stars reflected over water.  
except when she's teaching, and how well she teaches, how kindly she encourages, how firmly she chastises, and how much the students all love her.  
except when you wish that the hand tucking longer pieces of her hair behind her ear was yours and not her own.  
except when she smiles in that way she only does for Ven; her warmest, kindest smiles.  
except when she smiles in that way she only does for you; bright and honest.  
except when she is so kind, so supportive, so encouraging, when she believes in you so strongly and completely, when she's there to soothe your nightmares from your time as a prisoner in your own body and mind, when she stays with you and holds you until morning.  
  
only then is it agony.  
  
some nights, all you can do to stem some of the ache in your heart is to hold a pillow to you like a lost child, burying your face in it and wishing it was her hair, her forehead, her eyelid at your lips and not the cloth of the pillowcase.  
  
some nights, it only makes things worse. those nights, a desperate chant of unspoken words keeps you awake. the burning in your chest feels like you're going to explode from the inside out, and maybe you wish you would just so this would be over.

 

*

  
  
another night like that was the last straw. you realized that facing the rest of your life with nights like that was unbearable. it's probably selfish, putting your own peace of mind before the needs of your little family, but she's the one who keeps telling you that you've suffered enough. after the hell you endured, you deserve happiness.  
  
this certainly isn't going to be happy, but at least it will be the first step to moving on. you can accept that.  
  
soon. it'll be over soon.  
  
but it presents a new agony: finding the courage. it took you days. maybe weeks. you lost count. it all blurred until the moment when you just told yourself _screw it_ and pulled her onto a starlit balcony after all the students had gone to bed. it's not meant to be romantic, just private. you don't want to disgrace yourself in front of anyone else, if possible. you feel frustrated enough. after all, now the challenge is how to tell her.  
  
you may have hoped to be eloquent or tactful, but in your own usual fashion, you're blunt. _I'm leaving_ , you tell her. _I'm going to travel and find more students. it may take a year or so._ she's shocked; that's not even remotely surprising. she starts arguing. _how can you go, when we still need you?_  
  
this goes on for a while, but you've made your decision. maybe time, and a lot of space, will finally be enough to let her go.  
  
painful silence falls between the both of you. another goodbye under a star-filled sky. she's upset, and you can hardly blame her. how do you fix it? how do you make her understand without making her _understand_ …  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_I love you._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
oh no. did you say that out loud?  
  
no. that wasn't you.  
  
you turn, and she's staring at you, grim and apologetic. she looks away in almost angry embarrassment when you meet her eyes, and she starts rambling apologies and disclaimers about how it's not meant to keep you here, just that she needed to say it and if you're so determined to leave, it should be enough time the both of you to move on, because she knows you don't feel the same way…  
  
...how could she say that? did she really have no idea? were you really that good at hiding it? all those days it felt like it was consuming you, all those years you kept missing each other… _how_?  
  
it's funny, how everything that's been plaguing you has evaporated in a matter of moments. you don't have words anymore; you just quietly lace your fingers with hers and look into her eyes. words are no longer needed.  
  
for a long time, you hold each other. this isn't the same as when she helps you through a difficult night with reassurance and soothing words; she's almost shy, and trembling. you, maybe moreso. slowly, carefully, you ease into each others' embrace, and you're kissing her hair, her forehead, her eyelid. she holds your face in her hands, forehead to forehead, and tells you how long she's watched you, everything about you that she adores. Aqua - who is, to you, nothing short of perfection - sees beauty in all that is so imperfect about you. and despite yourself, you're inclined to believe her.  
  
  
you wonder, sometimes, what you ever did to deserve her.

**Author's Note:**

> THREE YEARS LATER, I have more things
> 
> so in case it's not...obvious, this was all/mostly pretty stream-of-consciousness. I don't come back to this much, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize this HAHA
> 
> also, the reason there are so many run-on sentences is because I was working off of something I remember from high school when reading the Great Gatsby: my fave high school English teacher showed us that early passage about Gatsby's party, and asked us what the most common word was. it was "and". I really wanted a similar sense of there being a sort of... _overload_ and _too much_. I hope that made sense when reading, and/or makes sense in retrospect!


End file.
